QuickLinks For 2007-12-20, II

• Documenting a "Planet in Peril":
  From February 2007 through July 2007 I worked with CNN´s Planet in Peril crew running around the globe to survey the state of Earth´s health. We experienced just about every possible climate, every weather condition. We flew, drove, boated, and walked thousands of miles on almost every continent. We slept on more than our fair share of concrete floors. Exhaustion and elation create an interesting combination. By the end we were tanked. But we knew it was worth it. Here are some pictures from the journey:  .....
  Getty Images News Blog (abbrev. and from Oct. 23rd, but it is actually timeless and was recently updated).

• Fair Use Vs. Free Speech in the Internet Age, The Lane Hartwell Problem:
  What we have here is a major disconnect between the norms of the offline world and the emerging norms of the Internet. [...]
  Like I say, you can argue both ways. Is the work transformative? Yes, the image takes on a new context within the video. Is it covered under parody if the video is not making fun of Hartwell´s image, but rather using it to make fun of Silicon Valley? Yes, because Hartwell as a Silicon Valley party photographer and the image in question of Valleywag editor Owen Thomas are both part of the very culture being parodied. [...]

In other words, don´t blame Lane Hartwell, blame the system. Okay. The subsequent pile-on by the other photographers confirms that the system of both copyright law and how creators get paid for their work does not translate to the Internet.  [...]

There needs to be some reciprocity. But the old norms don´t scale. Getting permission from a hundred different photographers does not scale.

It is, in fact, a limit on free speech because that video might never be made under those old rules.

Let me suggest a better solution: under a certain threshold or for works that are truly non-commercial, images and other content available on the Web should be free to use.

Once something hits a commercial level of popularity, if indeed it is commercial, that is when the licensing fees should kick in.

What would happen then? More people who are now "stealing" content would register for such licensing regimes, and photographers like Hartwell would see a flowering in their sources of income.

Each license might not be what Hartwell and her ilk are used to in the offline world, but taken together they could become more significant.

Now all we need is a startup to put such a licensing registration system into place.

Any takers?

TechCrunch/Erick Schonfeld. -And, any takers?